


we make mistakes (we leave them by the door)

by MissFaber



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Background Gendrya, Background Story Heavy, Childhood Memories, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Gay Starks we love to see it, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Jon Snow and Sansa Stark Are Not Related, Jon Snow and the Starks Are Not Related, One Night Stands, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Physical Abuse, Post-Prison, background Sansaery, background throbb, but like at its core this is a fic where jon gets all protective over sansa and sexy violent, this was supposed to be a light one night stand pwp but here we are, towards anyone who crosses her and they have a good time after
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:22:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26150338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissFaber/pseuds/MissFaber
Summary: Once, Sansa was sure that Jon was the person she wanted most. Then, after a disastrous night formed of a convoluted series of unfortunate events, he was the person who started her family on a slow and steady decline. Now, he's a stranger—one she's flying home to see after learning that everything she thought she knew about him might not be true.~ essentially a "one night stand fic gone horribly wrong" prompt fic with an intense backstory
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Sansa Stark/Margaery Tyrell, Theon Greyjoy/Robb Stark
Comments: 33
Kudos: 115





	1. eucalyptus rose

**Author's Note:**

> [check out the photoset for this fic!](https://missfaber.tumblr.com/post/627699604110098432/missfaber-we-make-mistakes-we-leave-them-by)
> 
> so............. if you think I deserve to have my ass handed to me bc i'm posting another WIP, I wholeheartedly agree, just drop me a line and i'll drop my location
> 
> but IN MY DEFENSE this was supposed to be a one shot to get me back in the fic writing mood 😭 I was [taking prompts over on tumblr](https://missfaber.tumblr.com/post/627550155471732736/i-need-to-get-back-into-writing-jonsa-but-i-cant) for this exact reason, and this is the result
> 
> this fic is for [@nowmywatch-begins](https://nowmywatch-begins.tumblr.com/), who [sent in the prompt!](https://missfaber.tumblr.com/post/627552942155759616/super-vague-prompt-one-night-stand-gone-horribly) hope you like it!
> 
> chapter title is old school ffn style, love that for me!! it's ALSO from "I Run to You" by MISSIO

Though the last time Sansa saw Jon was so heavily anticipated and hard won, it was not the strongest memory she had of him. The man she saw on that day was a ghost in black, the outline of someone she thought she knew but learned she didn’t. But now she knew that the things she thought she knew were false, too. The Russian dolls of misinformation seemed to never end, each one cracking neatly in half after years of appearing whole, revealing something new and stinging.

Sansa sighed and laid her head back on the uncomfortably solid headrest. She stared at the flat expanse of yellowed white a foot away from her eyes. She wished she could open the window, stare at the clouds or even the blank night sky—she had no sense of time anymore—but the flight attendant had already chastised her once.

She considered ordering a shot or two, bit the idea back viciously. She didn’t drink heavily, didn’t like the idea of it, didn’t like the sour memories of what it did to her aunt Lysa, what it nearly did to her infallible mother, after—

She closed her eyes tightly, trying not to think of him, of any of them—not her parents, not Robb. Her eyes burned as his voice echoed through her mind. _He took the fall for me, Sans._

Her thumb pressed down on her phone without direction from her mind, a muscle memory developed in the last six hours since Robb’s urgent phone call, minutes before he boarded his own plane.

_Come home, Sansa. He deserves it._

Through blurry vision, Sansa looked down at the phone in her lap. The image was bright and cheery, harsh in the dim cabin. Robb stood between her and Jon, an arm stretched around each of them, his smile the brightest thing in the photo. Vibrant yellows and oranges of the setting sun bled into the muted browns and greens of the palm trees surrounding them—and floating above their heads, the Hollywood sign. It was taken the same day as the award ceremony, but Robb showed no sign of nerves, only jittery excitement. Of the three of them he was the only one looking directly at the camera. Sansa remembered the pull of his arm on her elbow as he rolled onto the balls of his feet and back to his heels. She was irritated, but not much—she was staring at Jon, her rapture with him captured here in brilliant color, her hair blowing past her head in a brilliant banner that left her face exposed, displaying every ounce of yearning there. 

There were other shots, better curated, but this one was her favorite—one of the last in the series, a candid caught in the moment before they stopped posing. She’d looked for it and looked at it so many times since Robb’s call that she’d simply made it her phone’s wallpaper.

It was Theon behind the camera, she remembered.

 _A glass of Merlot wouldn’t hurt._ Sansa sighed and pressed the flight attendant button.

The first sip settled her, cooled her body by noticeable degrees. The last sip left her feeling softened, the edges of her mind blurred like her eyes had been feeling the entire flight. Her mind was unfocused, flitting between memories and years.

The flattering petal rose of her prom dress, never worn beyond the threshold of her childhood home. Arya’s shocking sensitivity when she’d realized what happened, the way she’d held her hand as they waited, the way her small fingers tightened as their parents raced past them and out the door with barely a glance.

Silver dragonfly earrings from Aunt Lysa, worn only once. Her parents’ muted fights over the credit card bills, the wine the wine the _wine._ The soft spines of every book Jon gave her that one summer he worked at the used bookstore. The musty smell of that enclosed space, its oppressive heat, the little sweat stains on Jon’s worn shirts. The way his eyes would crinkle in the corners if she presented him with a popsicle or an iced coffee or even a cold water.

Robb’s first Youtube Play Button, then his second. Theon’s wide, crooked smile and his soft eyes, the way she was never surprised to see him at the kitchen island or in the pool of the new house they moved into during her sophomore year of high school.

She clicked her phone again, saw Robb looking at Theon, something new that was always there.

As always, her eyes couldn’t stray from Jon for too long. His short curls, his biceps that had just started to bulge, his eyes crinkled shut in laughter. She wondered how different he looked now, if he was as unrecognizable as she.

Once, she was sure that Jon was the person who’d hurt her most. But that was a teenage girl’s thinking. The sting of betrayal had faded, but years of hurt followed, and all of it now rung hollow.

She didn’t know what to do with that, where to put it.

Once, she was sure that Jon was the only person she wanted. That to touch his face, his hand, would be the singular greatest pleasure of her life. She would sit on her window seat and dream of him, of _them,_ lounging in bed and walking everywhere hand in hand and doing things that lovers did.

Then he was someone she didn’t know, someone with secrets. Someone who started the Starks on the path of deterioration. Jon Snow was a brother, a dreamboat, a traitor, and then—for so, so long—nothing. A stranger somewhere far away. 

Now he was a victim, wronged. Wronged by all of them. The layers were being peeled back, and the only thing Sansa was sure of was that there were more. More layers, more to uncover, more to learn.

She had to talk to Jon.

Her hands stroked the empty mini-wine bottle, were chilled by the beads of condensation along its short neck. She hoped that the man she’d see when she arrived in Winterfell wasn’t the Jon she’d seen last.

That Jon was nothing like the Jon who sneaked Mom’s homemade lemon cookies into her room when she had mono and wasn’t allowed to eat anything but pungent broth. That was her strongest memory of him.

* * *

_He took the fall. He took the fall for me, Sans._

Once, Jon had taken the fall for her, too. Myranda, fiercely popular and unfailingly cruel, had invited Sansa to a party at one of the football players’ houses, even though she was only a sophomore, even though Sansa was too tall for a girl, had a big nose, and needed to stop eating so many desserts— according to Myranda. She’d help her, she promised sweetly, but Sansa wasn’t nearly as interested in that as she was in going to a real high school party. Ramsay wanted to kiss her, Myranda promised, and _everyone knew._

So Sansa snuck out, taking the leap from her two story window into the bushes, her bare and freshly lotioned legs getting scratched up, her ankle twinging a bit for the rest of the night.

But the tentative sips of the drinks they handed her tasted like what she imagined liquid fire to be, burning her throat even though they were bright red like Hawaiian Punch. And Ramsay didn’t act like she imagined he would, like the cool but sensitive boys in eighties movies acted. He did not spend the night by her side, talking with her about their classes and their interests and introducing her to his friends. In fact, she had a sinking feeling in her stomach that he was put up to this, that they were all playing a trick on her, except that Ramsay’s pale eyes never strayed too far from her, and his eyes looked hungry.

And when he pinched her ass when her back was turned and she slapped his hand away, and everyone looked at her in horror then burst out laughing in unison, Myranda laughing the loudest, it was Jon she called tearfully to pick her up. 

They saw the bright lights of the Stark house from the end of the street. Jon’s hand cupped her knee and she realized she was whimpering.

“Don’t worry,” he said evenly, and somehow her racing heart stilled beneath the pressure on her knee. When her parents got over the surprise of seeing Jon walk in with Sansa and began to interrogate her for sneaking out, Jon jumped in.

“It’s my fault,” he said. “I was nervous about going to this party alone and I asked her to come with me. I begged her. It was selfish, and irresponsible… I’m sorry.”

Jon fielded most of the questions that followed—whose house was the party at, were there parents present, alcohol?—while Sansa sipped on a cold water and her mother covered her scratches with Neosporin. He nodded bravely when her father said he’d be having a stern talk with his mother.

Soon after that night, he was no longer Jon, one of Robb’s friends, some kind of amalgam of a brother and a cousin and a family friend. He was something wholly different.

* * *

“Rose, like your pretty cheeks,” Mom said before pinching her face once, twice, scrunching her nose like she used to when she was a baby.

 _“Mom!”_ Sansa felt embarrassed even though they were alone, standing in front of the gold-foil edged full length mirror in her bedroom. Her cheeks flamed further, darker now than the dress. It was silk and backless, a vintage score, flowing off her like water but somehow simultaneously clinging to her form. It wouldn’t be as flashy as some of the chiffon and organza ball gowns she was sure to see in the auditorium tonight, but the vision she made in this dress was arresting in its own way.

She hoped Jon would agree.

“It really is such a lovely dress,” her mother said— for the hundredth time, but Sansa still beamed with pride. It had stolen her breath when she saw it in the boutique window a few weeks prior. But it wasn’t perfect— so, despite the risk, Sansa had made some alterations. She had removed the sleeves, added a longer train, created a neckline that touched her shoulders as a boat neck would but was cut low and had some give like a cowl neck. Every stitch, every seam was perfect—she’d never been prouder of her work, never been more sure of her passion and her path.

“Thanks, Mom,” Sansa said, cheeks hurting from smiling.

“You look so happy.” Mom’s voice wavered and Sansa looked closely at her, was disturbed to see a sheen of tears in her eyes.

“Mom…” A wave of emotion rose in her own chest, and Sansa pushed it down—she would not, she would _not_ , ruin her makeup.

Mom waved her hands in front of her face. “No, no, I’m fine!”

Sansa giggled. “Good.”

“Jon’s very lucky to be escorting you tonight.”

The swell of her heart in her chest was so strong it was almost painful. Sansa hadn’t dared hope for this, even during months spent wishing for things much more impossible. Even after the lake, the long hug in the Costco parking lot, the way he’d held her hand too long when he was helping her up an incline on that hike in California…

“Baby?”

She shook the mist out of her eyes. “I didn’t think he’d really ask me to prom,” she confessed. “If Gilly hadn’t forced Sam to plant the idea…”

“Jon’s a good boy, a gentle kind of person. He just needed a little push.”

 _Probably afraid of getting rejected,_ Gilly had soothed, over and over again, but Sansa hadn’t been able to believe Jon liked her until he said so, not stammering but sure, eyes like the still surface of the lake at night.

“Come on. Let’s take some pictures of you before Jon gets here.”

Sansa pinched her skirt carefully and followed her mother out of her bedroom, ignoring her brothers’ wolf-whistles as she passed. She rolled her eyes as Rickon varied his sounds, growing in both lewdness and volume.

 _“Rickon!_ Stop that, right this instant!”

 _“What,_ Mom? She doesn’t mind, right?”

“Just—stop.” Mom held up her hands, exasperated. “Where’s Robb?”

“He went out,” Bran answered after a moment.

“What? He takes the best pictures, he promised he’d be here for this—”

“It’s okay, Mom,” Sansa was quick to interrupt. She didn’t want anyone getting upset tonight. “You take great pictures too, I really don’t care.”

But Bran offered instead, and Sansa gave him a grateful look, pleased that the last hurdle of the night was overcome.

* * *

The woman Sansa lost her virginity to had eyes like knives, narrow and cutting, the palest shade of blue-grey. Her head was perpetually surrounded by a sweet smelling cloud. Sansa would lean forward, sucked in by the fragrance—vanilla, caramel, apple, always dessert—but just as she felt smoke touch her cheeks it would flip, turn sour.

“Tell me about the worst night of your life,” Margaery said after their second time, her already husky voice wrecked by smoking and sex.

Sansa buried her cheek into the pillow, but she couldn’t hide from Margaery. The woman had a way of pulling things from her. Sansa had never wanted to spill her guts, to _confess,_ the way she did in her presence. She wanted to be clean.

“It was the night of junior prom,” Sansa said, feeling both a stab of gutting pain at the memory and embarrassment at how stupid she must sound.

“Oh no,” Margaery replied, but it didn’t sound mocking. It was earnest, the way Margaery always was when they were like this—just the two of them and the darkness and the sheets. When she was extracting her stories, her sins. _Confess._

“Was it a Carrie situation?”

Sansa arched a brow. “I can’t imagine that’s a common occurrence.”

“I mean, a public humiliation. Pig’s blood not included.”

“No.” Sansa burrowed into the pillow, her shoulders hunching forward like a shield. “It was very, very private.”

She didn’t realize she’d closed her eyes until she opened them. They no longer lay in the dark. Dim but warm light bathed Margaery’s pale, naked body. A candle had been lit; eucalyptus filled her nose.

“There,” Margaery soothed, a slim but strong hand massaging one of her shoulders until she released the tension.

“I was supposed to go with a boy I liked,” Sansa started. Somehow, this was the easiest part of the story, though at the time she couldn’t imagine a worse pain than staring out of the window, waiting. “He didn’t come.”

“He stood you up?”

“Yeah. I remember the moment I realized he wasn’t just late, that he wasn’t coming at all.” Sansa inhaled deeply, the many clashing fragrances of Margaery’s space grounding her in the present. “I felt like… like I couldn’t ever eat again.”

Margaery nodded sagely, as if Sansa was making sense. “I know that feeling.”

“Sucks,” Sansa mumbled, sinking further into the pillows.

“Keep going,” Margaery prodded gently. Sansa wondered how she knew there was more.

“I was sitting there, with my sister, waiting. We knew he wasn’t coming but we were still waiting. All of a sudden my parents blow past us, and—you know when you just _know,_ that something’s really wrong?”

Margaery nodded.

“They didn’t come home. My mom sent me a text to take care of the kids, to keep them home the next day—it was Sunday.” Arya had been relentless with her questions, Rickon pouting and miserable. “At some point we all realized Robb—my big brother—hadn’t come home either.”

“Was he okay?” Margaery asked quietly.

“Yeah.” Sansa’s throat felt tight. “Yeah, but for a minute there it was crazy. We knew my parents were at the police station and the hospital, and we thought something happened to Robb, no one was telling us anything. But he texted my mom on Monday and explained… such bullshit,” she muttered.

“What did he say?”

Sansa hesitated. “Robb traveled a lot for work, even back then… basically he said he had a last minute trip thing and forgot to tell us.”

_Montreal for a brand deal, Theon’s here too. I’m not having any fun, it’s just business, I promise. I’m sorry._

“Wait… Robb… _Stark…”_

Sansa’s shoulders hunched again, loosened immediately by Margaery. “I wouldn’t think you knew him.”

“Christian media’s not my thing,” Margaery smirked. “Never heard of him ’til Jeffree Star tried to collab with him on a palette after Robb came out and got dragged to hell.” She laughed. “That was funny. Top online takedowns of the year, that’s for sure.”

Sansa managed a smile. “Yeah.”

“Hey, your brother’s really brave,” Margaery said, suddenly sober. “It can’t have been easy to do that, existing in the public eye like he does… especially on _that_ niche of the internet.”

Sansa nodded. Robb _was_ brave, but he was also gone. He didn’t have to watch their family fall apart, while she had no choice but to stay behind and pick up the pieces. She avoided Margaery’s eye. This was the kind of base, petty thought that she couldn’t seem to help, that shamed her to her core.

“I’m really happy Robb finally came out. He seemed miserable before.”

“What about you? How did your parents react when you came out?”

Sansa’s fingers twisted in the sheets. “I didn’t… really…”

Margaery’s eyes widened. “Do they still not know?”

“No, they do, it just wasn’t a big… conversation. They know I like men and women. There’s just always so much going on. I didn’t make it a big deal.”

Margaery was watching her closely, eyes somehow narrowed further. A harsh look, but it somehow lulled Sansa into a place where she wanted to say more, more.

“So what happened that night? Why were your parents at the police station?”

There it was, the thing she’d never been able to recover from, to reconcile with what she thought was the truth.

“The boy who was supposed to take me to prom… Jon.” It was hard to say his name to someone who didn’t know him, who didn’t know what he was to her. “The reason he didn’t come… well, he was caught up in something bad.”

She stopped talking; her throat felt tight. Margaery never stopped massaging her shoulder, fingers dancing across her back occasionally to reach the other side.

“What kind of bad thing?”

“Drug deal gone wrong.” There was still so much she didn’t know. How Jon—sweet and slightly shy and bookish—could have gotten involved in something like that, so young. If it was money, Lyanna’s medical bills, bad friends she didn’t know about.

A finger skated down her back, feather light. Sansa jumped.

“He got shot,” she whispered. She never knew where, or how long it took him to recover. A common theme during those days; information being kept from her while demands were made of her, until it felt like there was nothing left but toxic curiosity and resentment rattling through her bones.

“Was he…”

“He recovered.” Sansa swallowed. “Enough to go to juvie, anyway.”

A cloud of sweet smoke slipped from Margaery’s lips, the vape dancing in the fingers of her other hand. _Confess._ Sansa rose onto her elbows and shuffled sideways, landing on the pillow of Margaery’s breast, speaking the rest into her skin.

“And he was like family, really, especially since his mom was sick, so my parents were really involved in everything. It took a toll on them. And Robb was gone for like, _three_ months, and I swear to god my mom lost her mind. Her family has a history of alcoholism… well. It took a toll on all of us. Okay, you don’t know my mom, but she’s such a strong person and she was always the rock, and it was _so_ weird to see her… _not_ be that way? And there was this vacuum, suddenly, and none of us knew how to fill it. But it felt like I was the only one who was trying? No, it took a toll on all of us. My little sister was close to Jon and she was angry and confused. All the instability made my youngest brother a mess. Sometimes it was just me forcing them to go to school, to do their homework, remembering to feed them. And Robb was always gone, working twice as hard, like the money or the lawyers would fix him not being there that night. Or maybe he was just running away from us, from himself, from telling us he was gay? I don’t know. But I know it would have been a lot better if he was there, with me.”

Sometime during this release, Margaery’s hand had started stroking her hair. Margaery’s skin beneath her face was clammy, wet with Sansa’s tears. Sansa closed her eyes. She felt empty. She let the soft, repeated motion lull her to sleep.

* * *

Margaery graduated university at the end of Sansa’s freshman year, and she was once again unmoored, alone.

* * *

_He took the fall. He wanted to have my back. He took the fall, Sans. He didn’t want me to be alone. He took the fall…_

Robb’s words played slow and rhythmic in her mind, a lullaby that rose slowly in volume until she was awake. Immediately she wanted to close her eyes again. The plane would land soon, and her family, her brother, her…

Jon. Jon would be waiting for her.


	2. black tar spill

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [fic photoset here :)](https://missfaber.tumblr.com/post/628018168040947712/we-make-mistakes-we-leave-them-by-the-door)
> 
> ps, this isn't really supposed to make _logical_ sense... I don't know anything about criminal law and don't watch any crime shows (except for hannibal and that's an AU of an actual life on planet earth, so) so yeah please squint <333

“He took the fall. He took the fall for me, Sans.”

Eleven hours before her plane landed in White Harbor, Sansa was in her perpetually-sweltering studio apartment, drinking orange juice mixed with cheap champagne on a Thursday morning. It was the first day of her fall break. This was the only treat she was allowing herself before she spent the rest of the long weekend getting ahead on her schoolwork. Her counselor said she was showing signs of depression, and while Sansa didn’t disagree, she wasn’t alarmed. What was there to not be depressed about?

When Robb called her for the fifth time in the space of three minutes, Sansa downed her mimosa and took the call with no small amount of irritation.

Then, she listened. The words seemed to pour from Robb, who spoke for long minutes without pause, a black spill. _Confess._

“Sansa?”

Her mouth felt dry. Her mind buzzed as it tried to make sense of what she just heard. “You were being blackmailed?”

“They had pictures,” Robb confirmed glumly. “I wasn’t ready, Sans. It wasn’t about the channel or the money. I’d already started to hate it, I would have been so fucking relieved if it just… _disappeared,_ if I lost every single subscriber. I never got a chance to be a kid, everyone at school hated me, it was so much pressure. But I couldn’t… I wasn’t ready, I didn’t want _this_ to be taken away from me too, to let them out me.”

She understood, she did, even if it felt like the floor beneath her feet had turned to sand.

“How did… if you were being blackmailed, how did the drug thing become a part of it?”

A beat. “They were these… this weird, intense criminal ring, doing the blackmailing. They had drugs on them, weapons, tons of contraband.”

Sansa frowned—there was still a missing piece. There always seemed to be one. Why would people like that get involved with Robb, choose _him_ as a target for their blackmail? “What aren’t you telling me, still?”

“It was Theon,” he finally whispered, voice shaking and small, as if he wished he could hide. _Confess._ “He might have had a drug problem back then. Might’ve kept it from me…" A deep sigh; Sansa could hear the tears, the years of pain, in her brother's voice. How had she ever missed it? "He owed them money, _fuck_ , they were following him... that’s how they found out, and figured they’d get a big payout out of Theon Greyjoy’s internet famous closeted boyfriend.”

It was sand beneath her feet, dunes of watery sand, and she was slipping, would never find steady footing again.

Eventually, she found her voice. “And Jon…”

“I panicked. I told him, I needed to talk to someone. Someone who wouldn’t judge me, for any of it.” She heard Robb’s loud sigh—she knew what the ‘any of it’ meant. “He went there for me.”

Sansa closed her eyes. Her mouth tasted bitter. She was in the pink dress, petal rose. She felt the silk on her skin.

“He went to the rendezvous with me because he wanted to have my back, Sans. He didn’t want me to be alone. He didn’t trust Theon, not after what I told him. He was looking out for me. But he had nothing to do with it.”

“Wait.” Sansa blinked. “You were there?”

“Yeah.” She could hear the shame in his voice, but it wasn’t enough for her, not enough to quell the tide of anger rising in her chest.

“You were there, and you left him there? You _left_ Jon to catch the blame when he went there for _you?”_

“You weren’t there,” Robb snapped. “You don’t know. I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t choose to leave him, I was barely conscious at that point. The cops showed up and I got hit in the crossfire, Theon, he saved me, dragged me away—”

Her heart stopped— frantically picked up again. “Wait. Wait. You got _shot?”_

He sounded miserable when he answered. “I wasn’t in Montreal, I wasn’t doing business. I was… recovering.”

 _“What?!_ Oh my god.” For three months the Starks been so angry with Robb, felt abandoned by him; and all the while he might have been fighting for his life. _“Fuck._ Oh my god, Robb, what the fucking hell…”

A buzzing in her mind grew louder until she lost track of her words, though she felt them all—each one a hot pinch in her mouth. It wasn’t like her to lose control. Sansa was the one who stood solid and bore the fury of others.

 _Recovering._ “I can’t believe this,” she gasped.

“I know. I’m so sorry, Sans.”

“Don’t apologize to _me,”_ she snapped, even though she deserved an apology, had been waiting for one for years without even knowing the full extent of how much her brother had wronged her. “It’s Jon who needs your penance. _He_ got shot, too—and if that’s not enough, his whole life was ruined!”

“I hated myself for it,” Robb said quietly. “You don’t know, Sans.”

“No, I don’t.” Shame suffused her own body, a trembling that’d been building steadily for minutes. “I blamed him for so many things, Robb, and I was wrong.”

She thought he’d abandoned her for a drug deal, when he had been standing in the line of fire for her brother. _Prom night—_ hot tears burned her shame-red cheeks. She was so _stupid,_ to have been angry over something so silly. To have so readily believed the story she was told about the boy she knew, even if she never was quite able to reconcile it with the image she had of him.

Everything that followed… Mom’s drinking, Robb’s absence, the end of her childhood—she believed it all stemmed from Jon’s mistakes, that one poor choice. The luxury of time, lost, as she spent her senior year mothering her siblings. The dream of fashion school, now frivolous and dead, her passion dried up as she was forced to become an adult.

She didn’t blame Jon for all of it, but she did blame him for one thing. It was a flaming poker twisting in her chest, never fully releasing her. 

She blamed him for getting caught.

In the middle of the night, when exhaustion stripped her of her anger and the tears had dried on her cheeks, she’d think, she’d wish, _why did you have to get caught?_

She took a steadying breath. “That’s because of you, Robb. Because of the story you told. I don’t understand how you could keep this from us.”

“I begged him to tell, to let me take his place, but he said it wouldn’t work that way and he was right. We’d both get locked up and how would that make anything better? I was paying for everything, for his lawyers, for our _house—”_

“We would’ve been fine without your money,” she snapped. “We were before.” She was being cruel, she knew. Robb’s money sat in her own checking account, an accumulation of the generous amount he sent her every two weeks. But a part of her couldn’t forgive this, couldn’t fully believe that Robb hadn’t traded Jon’s freedom for his own fame.

“I promise you I would have turned myself in, if it wouldn’t have made everything worse for everyone,” Robb said, subdued and weary. “I didn’t care about anything else. Not the channel or how much money I was making. Not even Theon… not at the time, and I know that’s shitty. But everything was ruined. I was getting eaten up by guilt and I couldn’t run away from it. But Jon _got caught,_ with a suitcase full of cash he was giving to the fucking mafia, and he was behind bars, and it didn’t matter how much I wanted to take his place. I wanted to tell the truth. It felt like the only thing that would make me feel better—fuck, I know that’s selfish.”

Sansa sighed. She’d seen Robb’s misery, seen it in his downturned eyes and the way he was always running, even if she hadn’t known the reason for it.

“I don’t mean… I don’t necessarily mean, tell the police. You’re right, I don’t know how much that would have made things better. But how could you not tell us, your family? _His_ family? Dad was so angry with him, Arya was so confused, I…”

She blamed him, she hated him, she missed him.

“It just… seemed impossible.” Robb sounded defeated, his voice a shadow of a shadow of the boisterous boy she grew up with. “Jon didn’t want me to, during the trial, to make sure nothing got out about my involvement… and… and it was just too easy to keep my mouth shut. That’s the fucking truth.”

“And after?” The rage was coming back, prickling under her skin. _“After_ the trial? When Jon was left to rot in a cell somewhere? How could you not tell us then?”

“I didn’t _want_ to!” Robb was breathing heavy—moving fast, or maybe something was eating him up inside too, forcing his voice to come out louder, louder. _Confess._ “I didn’t know how to tell a part of it, without telling all of it, how to _start._ Do you think it would’ve helped Mom to know? Do you think it would have helped—”

“Don’t. Don’t fucking act like you did this for us!” Sansa’s hands were fists in her lap, vibrating. “We all thought the worst of Jon, Robb. How could you _let_ us? How could you do that to him?” 

“I don’t blame him if he hates me, if he never talks to me again. I deserve it. But _you_ have to.” Robb’s voice was loudest now, crystal clear as if he was standing beside her. “You have to talk to him, see him. You have to come home.”

The sand beneath her feet gaped open, threatened to swallow her up.

“I… I never visited him, Robb.” Sansa didn’t know how she could do so now, how she’d be able to meet his eyes through the glass without bursting into tears.

“Not… asking you to visit him in jail,” Robb said. His voice, so clear until now, started to dip and fade behind the noises of crowds and intercoms and his own heavy breathing. Robb was running.

“He’s out, Sansa. He’s coming home.”

* * *

_Come home, Sansa,_ Robb said, and so she did, boarding a plane before noon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i feel the family angst in this chili's tonight


	3. a shape, a silhouette

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [x](https://missfaber.tumblr.com/post/629189632759906304/we-make-mistakes-we-leave-them-by-the-door)

When they were speaking on the phone, Sansa ached to be standing before her brother rather than stand listening to an echo of his voice. She wished to see his face move with emotion—regret, release. But when she saw him outside White Harbor Airport, his silhouette instantly recognizable, she cursed underneath her breath. _You’ve got to be kidding me._

“Hey, Sansa.”

It was Theon who spoke first, a slight and crooked smile on his face. She could see the fear in his eyes as he looked at her, as he waited for her response. Sansa had no idea what that would be, but Robb saved her from having to decide.

“Sansa.” She felt her name reverberate through Robb’s body as they embraced. Despite everything, she clutched at him fiercely, holding him tight, tighter.

“I wasn’t expecting you to pick me up,” she mumbled, a stiff greeting. She felt awkward, unsure how to act or feel, a feeling compounded by her acute awareness of their audience. 

“We got in a couple hours ago,” Robb said. “I figured we’d wait for you, get a bite to eat, and we could all go home together.”

Sansa nodded as she pulled back. She hadn’t thought this far ahead when she boarded the plane, could barely manage to do so now. “So… you’re staying at home, then?”

Robb’s gaze immediately dropped to the ground. “If I can, yeah.”

Theon’s hand immediately found Robb’s forearm, molding to him in a reassuring hold. Their eyes met, speaking without words. Suddenly Sansa wasn’t sure if she’d actually looked at her brother in years— she noticed the pronounced purple shadows beneath his eyes. He was thin.

“I owe you an apology, Sansa.”

Theon’s voice drew her gaze away from her brother. He wore a brave face; lifted chin, courage in his light eyes, but his trembling mouth betrayed him. “I messed up, I messed up bad and your family paid the price. Especially Jon. I want you to know that I’ve been to rehab, and I’m clean. Completely sober. Nineteen months.”

“That’s good,” she said feebly after a moment. She didn’t know what to say. “I’m glad you’re better.”

“Thanks,” he said, and Sansa was saved from having to look at his pale, pitiful eyes for a second longer by their Uber pulling up to the curb. 

* * *

“I’m happy,” Robb said when the two of them were alone in the backseat of the car. “I love him.”

Sansa had been privately pleased when the Uber made a stop at a nondescript house—Theon’s Airbnb, she’d realized, when Theon had parted from them with his suitcase and a quick kiss from Robb. “He can’t stay at his dad’s house,” Robb had informed her when Theon was gone. Apparently, Balon Greyjoy was a toxic cocktail of homophobic and abusive, an unwelcoming gatekeeper at best and a threat to Theon’s sobriety at worst. “And I didn’t think it was the best thing for him to stay at Mom’s and Dad’s this time.”

_I’m happy. I love him._

After a moment, Sansa let herself respond candidly. She wasn’t sure if she owed him any more coddling. “I’m not sure those two always have to go hand in hand.”

“I’ve always loved him.” There was an edge of desperation to his tone. Sansa let herself glance sideways at him, saw the intensity in his eyes. As if he were pleading. “Do you understand?”

Anger flared inside her, licked up the hollow of her chest. “Yeah.”

* * *

Jetlag and emotional exhaustion lulled Sansa to a half-sleep until the car stopped with a jerk in front of the Stark home. After a far too brief reunion with her delighted and surprised parents—Robb had informed them of his arrival, but Sansa, in her frenzy, hadn’t—Robb pulled them aside to Dad’s office after shooting her a quick, apprehensive look. Sansa couldn’t meet his gaze. She didn’t know if she could muster any sympathy for him.

She spent the day with Rickon and Bran in the living room, playing video games badly as they lorded their victories over her, the three of them ignoring the occasional shout or exasperated cry from the office. _Nothing’s changed._ It felt like she was still stuck in the tail end of high school, like she had never left.

When they emerged from the office, they all looked like they’d aged. Mom swept past them and up the stairs without a word. Dad immediately walked into the kitchen and pulled a pill bottle out of a cabinet. Then he met Sansa’s eyes, gave a wan smile.

“Let’s go out to dinner.”

* * *

Sansa watched Arya swivel on the squeaky barstool, again and again. The carefree motion was completely at odds with her deep frown.

“He gets out tomorrow,” Arya muttered. “Robb promised he’d sneak me into the bar we’re all meeting at. He better.”

Sansa and Arya had found a pocket of privacy by the bar of the arcade restaurant, one of their favorites growing up. Sansa had ordered two Diet Cokes—amended to a Diet Coke and a root beer when Arya frowned. Bran and Rickon were running around, making good use of their fistfuls of tokens; Sansa’s eyes followed them by habit. At the table where they’d all picked at their dinner, it looked like Dad and Robb had entered another round of intense conversation.

“I want to see Jon,” Arya said. “I want to hear his side.”

“I don’t know how different his story’s gonna be,” Sansa sighed. “Robb said Jon insisted on not telling.”

“That’s why I want to hear his side,” Arya repeated stubbornly. Sansa nodded. Arya hadn’t spoken a word to Robb throughout the car ride or the meal, hadn’t even looked at him since he pulled her aside when she got home. When she’d started yelling, Sansa had drawn Bran and Rickon out to the backyard and fervently tried to distract them with games that weren’t interesting enough to draw their attention away from the commotion in the house. Rickon had been stubborn and upset, and Bran’s quiet and piercing insistence that Sansa talk to him about what was going on was no less difficult to manage. When her dad finally came outside to take over, she’d felt so _relieved,_ so hollowed out—she’d blindly walked to the closest bathroom, eyes so blurred by tears she’d relied entirely on memory, and cried into a washcloth to muffle the sound.

“I can’t believe he told me last.” Arya’s gaze was fixed on her scuffed shoes as she pushed them against the metal bars of the stool. “Fuck.”

“Hmph.” Sansa raised a brow, and when Arya met her eye she knew she’d meant to evoke a reaction.

“Are you going to tell me not to curse, Mom?”

Sansa smiled placidly. “No. You’re old enough now, I think.” She sighed. “I don’t think I’m going to tell anyone what to do anymore.”

Arya smiled back. “I think that’d be good for you.”

Sansa pressed the heel of her foot back against the metal footrest of her own barstool, pushed experimentally. A weak half-spin, but it brought another smile to her lips.

“Are you mad at him?”

“No, not even a little.” She laughed, a hollow sound. The sudden buoyancy made her frank and forthcoming. _Confess._

“What I feel towards him is so far from anger it’s ridiculous,” Sansa spoke so fast the words were more a gasp than a sentence. “The way I used to feel about him… how could I just lock it up and— _believe_ this terrible story about him. How could I just _put it away._ I’m not mad at him, I’m mad at everyone else. Mostly at myself.”

Arya looked at her evenly. “I meant Robb.”

“Oh.” Sansa took a long, shockingly cold sip of her Diet Coke. “Oh.”

Arya kindly looked away, clearly allowing Sansa to get her bearings. When they were younger, Arya had known about the depth of her feelings for Jon, though they’d been of little interest and often cause for revulsion to the younger girl. But she remembered the tight grip of Arya’s hands on her own as she waited in her prom dress, no longer alone in her purgatory.

A part of Sansa was curious how Arya would feel now.

_What does that matter?_

She sighed and recalled Arya’s question. “I told Robb how I feel, and yes, a huge part of that is anger for lying to us. But you also have to understand that it’s not an easy thing to come out. And Robb was in an especially hard position.”

Arya sighed. “I really _don’t_ understand how he ever got started with Starike for Christ. It’s _so_ embarrassing.”

“Blame our weird nanny for that,” Sansa rolled her eyes. Robb had been young and susceptible, and she even younger, too young to remember all the details. All she remembered was that Robb started to spend a lot of time talking to a camera, and then it was a part of him, as routine as his freckles or his obnoxious laugh. “I guess when something like that snowballs it can feel too big to escape. Even when you want to.”

“I don’t know if I can do it,” Arya mumbled after a while.

“Do what?” Sansa asked gently.

“Forgive him.” Arya’s eyes were large and vulnerable, as if she were ten rather than almost eighteen. “Jon went to _jail,_ Sansa.”

“I know,” Sansa swallowed. She watched as Arya absentmindedly fingered the charm that hung off her necklace, shaped like a needle. An old birthday gift from Jon, the only piece of jewelry Arya owned.

“Did you visit him?”

It was a question Sansa had been too scared to ask of Arya until now. She didn’t want to hear the answer, knew what it would be.

“A few times.” Arya frowned. “It was weird. He didn’t want to talk about anything real, like how he got there or what the fuck happened. He wanted to act like nothing changed. I guess that makes more sense now.”

Sansa wasn’t sure it did, wasn’t sure any of them could do anything to make it up to him.

* * *

“You’re leaving?”

Robb’s head was ducked, his face hidden as he shuffled down the path. He jerked and stopped, clearly surprised to hear a voice in the darkness. It swallowed him in his dark clothes, made it easier for him to hide.

Sansa hated the poisoned, petty part of her that resented other people’s ease. The part that stirred with envy at how they remained unaffected. The part of her bubbled with painfully sincere questions when she looked at them: _how do you make yourself stop caring?_

She couldn’t summon that feeling now. Even as she looked at Robb attempting to flee once more into Theon’s arms after shattering their family’s already fragile stability. It had left her, just as many things had the moment she heard the true story. Her perspective had shifted. Things _were_ easy for her, after all—she hadn’t gone to prison, had she? A part of her knew that suffering was relative, but Jon’s suffering was the ruler by which she measured now. She wasn’t capable of thinking of anything else.

It grounded her, this focal point. She felt still for the first time in years. She wondered if Robb knew he was craving stillness, too. 

“I think it’s best if I go,” Robb said. 

Sansa dug her heel into the hard lawn and pushed off, setting the porch swing rocking. “Did Mom or Dad say you’re not welcome?”

Rob scoffed, the sound devoid of insolence. “Mom won’t leave her room. Dad’s—” His voice broke. “Dad’s ashamed of me.”

“Don’t do the easy thing.” Sansa was surprised at the evenness of her voice. She felt the ground beneath her feet, solid. “Stop being selfish. Stop running.”

Her gaze did not relent until Robb reversed his steps, walking past her and back into the house.

* * *

As soon as she lay her head to the pink ruffled pillowcase, her eyes slid closed. Sansa was used to listlessness and insomnia, used to staring at the ceiling until the early hours of the morning. But she slept through the night and most of the following day, was shocked to wake groggily to an early afternoon sun and a parched throat. 

Halfway down the front steps, disoriented, she heard a high pitched whine that dissolved wetly into words. She paused and listened. In the silence of what seemed like an empty house, Robb and Mom were talking. Crying.

She tiptoed silently upstairs, drank from the bathroom faucet instead.

* * *

Sansa stared at her reflection in the heavy gilded mirror, so unlike the paperweight Ikea one that hung off the closet door of her college apartment. Just like it had years before, this mirror showed her an image Sansa hoped Jon would like.

She swallowed, felt the burn of tears threatening behind her eyes. Hope brimmed in her chest, threatened to overflow. But fear filled her feet with lead and sent her hands shaking.

Sansa blinked carefully, meaningfully. She was no longer that little girl, naïve and easily broken. This night wouldn’t end like that one had—she was only now realizing that it never _had_ ended. It has stretched itself darkly and definitively over her life, and tonight was the end of its continuation, the last chapter.

She tugged on the neckline of her silky black shirt. A loose, flattering cowl neck. The identical neckline was a coincidence, it was. She’d worn this shirt a hundred times, one of her go-tos for nicer parties or nights out on the town.

It was tucked into her best pair of dark jeans, the silver buckle of her belt matching the metalwork details on her favorite boots. The light struck her earrings, brilliant silver dragonflies. _That_ was no coincidence; she’d spent forty minutes looking through the boxes in her old bedroom for them.

Her eyes were smoked out with shadow, her lips painted a flattering pink just a shade darker than her natural color. She pulled a thin, dark green jacket on over her bare shoulders. It was a frigid fall night. 

“Ready?” Arya opened the door before she’d finished knocking, a total disregard for privacy that was just her way. She gave her an appraising look and, before she could answer: “Yep, you look good.”

“Thanks.” Sansa rushed past Arya into the hall before her sister could see that she was blushing. She could already tell that the worst had happened; she wanted to be collected and steady but she felt raw, as if all her nerve endings were exposed. As if she had no skin.

“How will Robb sneak you in?” Sansa asked in an effort to distract them both.

Arya paused on the steps behind her, then whispered, “Fake I.D.”

Sansa swallowed her judgment, was surprised that she was even capable of such a reaction. “Okay.”

“He got one for Gendry too.”

Sansa could not hide her surprise at this, if only because it seemed so random.

“He must really be trying to get on my good side,” Arya rolled her eyes. Her feet shuffled and she lowered her gaze to the floor. “I know, he doesn’t know Jon and he’s not family, he shouldn’t really be there? But he won’t be, he’ll just be in the bar somewhere in case I need a breather. I… I need him.”

It was more vulnerability than she’d ever seen from Arya. It felt like a gift. “I understand.”

Arya smiled, then collected herself and pulled the little needle away from her neck, pointing it at Sansa. “If you ever tell Gendry or anyone that I said I _need_ him, I’ll stab you.”

Sansa grinned. For a moment, she felt calm; still waters before the storm.

* * *

Castle Black was a dark, industrial pub with too many exposed beams and terrible but cheap pitchers of beer. Sansa whiled the minutes away by making chit chat with Gendry; as a stranger, he was relatively safe and uncomplicated, a somewhat soothing distraction from the reality of what was about to happen. After they’d all entered with no issues and Robb had procured two pitchers for their table, Sansa felt a sharp jab at her waist.

“What,” she complained, knowing the owner of such a pointy elbow could only be Arya.

“He’s here.”

Sansa straightened, her hand unconsciously rising to wipe at her mouth, fiddle with her hair. She squinted through the dark, fogged windows, wondering what Arya saw that she was yet to see. It took every ounce of her self control not to run for the doors and discover it for herself.

Then, she saw it—him. A silhouette, broader than what she remembered, but similar in height. Just a silhouette, a shape, but the clenching of her chest confirmed what she saw.

Jon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just want to clarify that this isn't a Robb hating/bashing fic in any way, and I hope it doesn't read that way!! Or Theon! Just a different and really random Modern AU version of their characters. I like writing darker, more complicated, and somewhat "unlikable" characters especially when I have the ability to mess around with backstory in Modern AU fics


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